


And what we might have been

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Backstory, Childhood, F/M, Gen, Military, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Romance, Song - Freeform, States
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:48:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22837291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: "Mercy Street folks, did the show ever mention or discuss where Byron Hale originally comes from?" BroadwayBaggins, 2/21/2020, on Tumblr.Answers ensued. This is mine.
Relationships: Byron Hale/Anne Hastings
Comments: 10
Kudos: 7





	And what we might have been

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BroadwayBaggins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BroadwayBaggins/gifts), [sagiow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sagiow/gifts), [tortoiseshells](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tortoiseshells/gifts), [MercuryGray](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/gifts).



Byron Hale is from Ohio, from a farm a half a day’s journey outside Zanesville. He’d raised a sickly brown colt he’d unwisely named Racer, and there were mornings he woke at Mansion House and expected to see the sunrise over the faded red barn. When a private told him the story of “Lorena” in the minute before he hacked off the boy’s ruined femur, Byron added it to his repertoire and nodded when Anne’s eyes filled with tears.

*

Byron Hale is from New York and his mother kept a boarding house filled with military officers who’d grinned at his childish salutes. He liked to go down to the docks and watch ships busy with men, though he knew he was meant for the Army like his father and grandfather before him. A British sailor once cuffed his ear and that was the first time Byron wanted to kill someone. 

*

Byron Hale is from Florida. He’s used to the wet heat and the dark eyes of creeping things, the darkness of vines; he likes a scalpel because it doesn’t take much force to cut away what doesn’t belong. He was beaten for speaking like the poor folks and his mother told him to take up singing to help with his drawl. He never wanted to go back, not even the winter Alexandria iced up, the air like dull needles.

*

Byron Hale is from Pennsylvania and Iowa and New Jersey, from military camps and rented houses, from a pair of rudely painted portraits of his parents always in a place of honor. The only boy with a passel of sisters, each more scrawny and ginger and freckled than the next, from Millie down to little, lisping Alphronia. He was his father’s pride and his mother’s joy and neither knew how he’d nearly failed every set of exams during medical school.

*

Byron Hale is from California. He was sent West by the mad Major and he’d cursed it, but it had been the making of him. He’d taken Foster’s letter of introduction and Samuel’s instruction to plan the close before he made the first cut. He’d written to Anne once he’d arrived but she didn’t come until he’d bought the second nicest house in town, its quince trees in full bloom. She would have said yes to the house alone, but he wasn’t taking chances and had a sapphire ring with a stone the size of a hound’s eye to seal the deal.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Lorena," a song based on the lyricist's love for a Zanesville, Ohio girl named Ella Blocksom. The lyricist was a Unitarian minister! It became a favorite of soldiers of both sides during the American Civil War. Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.


End file.
